Four-minute read
For decades, Iran’s clerical regime has squandered the nation’s wealth on repression, corruption, and regional adventurism, leaving ordinary families to bear the crushing weight of economic ruin. Today, the crisis has penetrated every corner of society, from the kitchens of working-class families in Tehran to the classrooms of rural and nomadic children. What once were isolated signs of hardship have now become the daily reality of millions. Families are forced into debt just to put bread on the table, and children walk long distances to school on empty stomachs, fainting from hunger during morning assemblies.
Families Surviving on Debt
In the past, installment purchases were limited to expensive household items such as televisions, refrigerators, or cars. But in today’s Iran, under the regime’s catastrophic economic policies, even bread, rice, cooking oil, and milk must be bought on credit.
Reports from across the country reveal that families who once enjoyed modest stability now cannot afford even the most basic goods. Many households now purchase food and detergents through installment plans offered by local shops or online platforms. A once-proud culture of self-reliance has been replaced by the humiliating necessity of signing a ledger at the neighborhood grocer to receive a few eggs, a bottle of milk, or even a loaf of bread—payable later, if at all.
#Iran News: New Anti-Speculation #Tax Forces Citizens to Shoulder Regime-Created Inflationhttps://t.co/LkSx8ZiL2q
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 17, 2025
As reported by Didban Iran, one retired teacher from northeast Tehran described the situation bluntly: “A few years ago, people filled their baskets at chain stores. Today, they line up to buy only one or two items and must buy staples like rice and oil on credit. When this is happening in my area, I cannot imagine the misery in poorer districts.”
Even bakeries, long seen as the last bastion of affordable sustenance, now keep credit books for customers who cannot pay immediately. When bread—the cheapest food on the Iranian table—must be purchased on installment, it exposes the depth of a crisis that has left no family untouched.
The statistics confirm this collapse. According to Iran’s official data, food inflation in mid-2025 far outpaced overall inflation, with bread and grains rising 16.6% in just one month, while wages stagnated. Families now carry a permanent cycle of debt, often unable to pay off one installment before new debts are incurred for the next round of basic necessities. Debt has become not a path to advancement but a desperate tool for survival.
#Iran News: New Anti-Speculation #Tax Forces Citizens to Shoulder Regime-Created Inflationhttps://t.co/LkSx8ZiL2q
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 17, 2025
Hunger in Schools
This same crisis echoes tragically in the nation’s schools, particularly in rural and nomadic regions, where poverty and deprivation are most severe. A recent report by a state-run Shargh Daily described heart-wrenching scenes of children arriving at school after walking long distances, only to collapse from hunger during morning line-up.
Teachers and principals, unable to provide even a simple snack, often have no choice but to send fainting children home. With no nearby shops and families unable to afford food, there is nothing to give them. According to one person interviewed by Shargh: “These children have no fuel for learning. At best, their breakfast is a piece of dry bread and a bit of curd, eaten on the road to school.”
Malnutrition among children has become a widespread crisis. A field study by social workers found that only two percent of children in Iran consume dairy daily, while half receive none at all. Protein intake is equally dire, leaving a generation stunted in both health and opportunity.
Social activists from Khuzestan and Ilam provinces confirm the situation: children leave home before dawn without breakfast because families cannot afford it. Many are already malnourished from lack of food throughout the day. Witnesses describe repeated incidents of children fainting from weakness in schoolyards, a living symbol of the cruelty of the regime’s policies.
#Iran News: #Crypto Mining Farm Discovered in Ahvaz Stadium Tunnels Exposes Deepening Corruption in Regime Institutionshttps://t.co/68EfJYuXvD
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 11, 2025
A Nation in Debt and Hunger
The connection between these two realities is stark: when parents must buy bread and milk on credit, children inevitably go hungry. What should be the most basic of rights—the ability to feed one’s family—has become unattainable for millions.
This is not merely an economic hardship but the result of deliberate policies of plunder, corruption, and mismanagement. The regime diverts the nation’s resources to fund its security apparatus and proxy wars abroad, while Iranian families struggle to afford milk for their children or detergent to clean their clothes. The social consequences are devastating: rising poverty, deepening inequality, and a generation of children robbed of their health, education, and future.
The normalization of debt for survival illustrates the extent of the crisis. In the past, a family might borrow to buy a home or invest in their future. Today, they borrow just to live another day. Children, meanwhile, go without the nourishment needed to grow and learn, condemning an entire generation to physical weakness and educational disadvantage.
How Many #Iranians Live Below the #Poverty Line?https://t.co/fClcBw6aLX
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 11, 2024
Iran’s economic collapse under the clerical regime is not an abstract problem of inflation or GDP figures. It is visible in the empty shelves of family kitchens and in the hollow eyes of children fainting from hunger at school. It is a crisis that exposes not only the failure of the regime’s economic management but also its utter disregard for the dignity and survival of the Iranian people.
While the regime spends billions on repression and foreign adventurism, Iranian families are reduced to signing credit ledgers for bread and milk, and Iranian children are left without the strength to learn. The evidence is overwhelming: the clerical regime has brought Iranian society to the brink of humanitarian disaster.